BBC under fire again as it removes article suggesting insurance companies were racist

The BBC has been forced to remove a "thoroughly wrong" article which claimed car insurance companies were racist. The broadcaster has come under fire this week after accusations of "doctoring" President Donald Trump's speech to appear like he was encouraging the Capitol riots. A leaked dossier has now detailed the outrage at the BBC Verify service for its journalists writing about an "ethnic penalty" in car insurance.

The memo by Michael Prescott, a former independent adviser to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board, said the article was "thoroughly wrong". He added that the BBC "fell too easily for putting out ill-researched material that suggested issues of racism where there were none". The story claimed that crime rates were higher in areas with large ethnic minority populations, even if crime and accident levels were similar to those in nearby places.

The story was published in February 2024, and featured on BBC Breakfast, the One and Six O'Clock News, Radio 1 Newsbeat, Radio 5 Live and the BBC's TikTok channel.

Mr Prescott requested an internal review into the matter, which found the article to be "so unlikely", and discovered "multiple serious editorial problems" with the reporting.

The memo said: "BBC audiences were being encouraged to believe Britain's major insurers were, intentionally or unintentionally, racist, and charging high prices to customers based on their ethnicity.

"For me, it was hard to imagine UK FTSE boards or executive teams conceiving of or sanctioning a policy to charge ethnic minority customers higher prices."

After the story was flagged to executives at the BBC, the reference to the "ethnic penalty" was removed. However, the story was "so thoroughly wrong that later, a stricter view was taken and the entire report was taken down."

The data was reportedly at least five years out of date, and the story did not take into account external factors that influence insurance prices.

A statement was published in place of the article, which read: "BBC News has removed an article from our website about car insurance premiums as it did not meet our normal editorial standards."

This comes after the BBC allegedly "doctored" a speech by US President Donald Trump, making him appear to endorse the Capitol Hill riots in the run-up to last year's election.

The public service broadcaster included the edited clip in a Panorama programme released just days before US citizens went to the polls, according to a report cited by The Telegraph.

It showed Mr Trump telling supporters he would go with them to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to "fight like hell", when in fact he had been filmed saying he would walk with them to the Washington, D.C., building "to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard".